Original ArticlesA Brain Marker for Developmental Speech Disorders
Section snippets
Methods
Participants (n = 86; age range, 9.25-11.25 years) were recruited from the Early Language in Victoria Study (ELVS), a longitudinal community-based study of 1900 children.3 Communication status was collected almost annually from 8 to 10 months of age3 up to the age at the current study (ie, 9-11 years). Age of scanning was carefully chosen to reflect a time when communication trajectories are relatively stable.17 Ethics approval was granted by the Royal Children's Hospital Human Research Ethics
Results
The 4 groups were matched for demographic characteristics (Table I). Male:female were comparable across groups (DSD, 7:10; DSLD, 6:5; DLD, 7:6; control, 21:24). Nonverbal IQ scores, although within the typical range, were lower in children with DLD than in children with DSD as commonly reported in this group.17 As expected, children with DLD had significantly lower CELF-IV scores (total, receptive, and expressive) than the other 2 groups, whereas children with DSD had significantly lower
Discussion
We report herein an association between DSD and reduced fractional anisotropy of the left CBT, suggesting that atypical development of this tract may be a neural marker for DSD. Altered connectivity of the left CBT has previously been associated with speech disorder in different childhood populations and disease models, including childhood stuttering14 and dysarthria after childhood traumatic brain injury.13 In adult cases, left hemisphere lesions to regions along the CBT as tracked here (ie,
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Cited by (0)
Supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Centre of Research Excellence (CRE) (1023493 [to S.R., A.M., and A.C.]); NHMRC CRE (1116976 [to A.M., A.C., and S.R.]); NHMRC Career Development Fellowship (607315 [to A.M.]) and NHMRC Practitioner Fellowship (1105008 [to A.M.]); and a Hearing CRC grant (to S.R., A.M.) A.M., S.R., and A.C. are grateful to the Operational Infrastructure Support Program of the State Government of Victoria for their support. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.